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A Clinical View of the World

OVER the last decades, so much sex has been injected into the straining fabric of fashion that it often looks -- in figurative terms, if not literal ones -- like a water balloon about to burst and leave everyone cold, wet and in need of some nice warm clothes.

So it is refreshing, yet still rather startling, that someone should have the dignity, sense and style to bring out a line of women's underwear that takes sex off the table instead of serving it up with salad tongs. That someone is the stylist Victoria Bartlett, and unlike the other Victoria, she does not have a secret. On the contrary, she would prefer to blare her message to the thonged masses loud and clear: "Put your pants on."

"I'm hardly a prude," said Ms. Bartlett, who made her name as an influential stylist for photographers like Steven Klein and design houses like Prada. It is simply that in her view underwear should be seen and not ogled. "They burned the bras in the 1970's, but the message got a bit garbled," said Ms. Bartlett, who was born in England and has lived in New York for almost 20 years. "It was supposed to be about women's empowerment. Now it's the opposite."

While other designers make clothes that verge on underwear, and underwear houses make garments and packaging as triple-X as possible, Ms. Bartlett takes a different tack, making underwear that could easily double as a sporty ensemble, provided you are going to a terribly chic yoga class.

Fascinated with the style of vintage swimwear and athletic wear from the Olympics, her collection is racy in a 50-yard-dash kind of way. And if her aesthetic has a slightly antiseptic quality -- well, so much the better. Ms. Bartlett is a firm believer in the fortifying power of a slightly medical aesthetic, if not medicine itself.

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"I was a hypochondriac as a child," she said. "I always thought I was ill." Her germophobia has abated -- indeed, like many Britons, she is puzzled at the American take-no-prisoners style of housecleaning -- but she still loves a bit of surgical supply. She even acknowledges going through the cabinets at the doctor's office should the doctor leave the room.

"I loved all the packaging, the instruments, the porcelain things they use to mix stuff," she said. She and Mr. Klein sometimes visit surgical supply shops to look for props and are the proud possessors of a CPR dummy. (A memorable Army physical layout that Mr. Klein shot for Dsquared pops into mind.)

Attracted to the unadorned geometric design of medical wares, Ms. Bartlett began collecting lab glass, beakers and apothecary jars some 10 years ago. "They're almost architectural," she said. "I'm really drawn to the purity of the shapes." With their idealized design and references to a time when medicine seemed to hold all the answers, the bottles, beakers and flasks have a calming effect, like the latest pharmaceutical from Pfizer, but without all the side effects and dependency issues.

So hold the anesthetic. For some people living under the influence of an aesthetic is a far better prescription.